Its tail slowly rises over its head, dripping green venom, when a bright beam of blue-black lighting pierces through its chest right at its heart. An Aurelian charges past the Scorp towards me. He’s over seven feet tall, with a shaved head and a terrifying brand on his forehead, his black robe opened to show his muscled, powerful body.
The Scorp’s claws open. The pressure releases, but the tail darts towards me, straight for my eyeball. A marble-white hand grabs it, squeezing around the writhing tail, and the drop of venom falls an inch in front of my eye as a second Aurelian wrestles the dying Scorp to the ground. As it falls, I see another alien retracting his blood-stained blade.
The Scorp twitches and dies as the third Aurelian of the triad enters the cellar. They take up space, making the roomy cellar feel small as the Scorp is subdued, twitching a last time as the Aurelian who tackled it to the ground grunts, his biceps flexing as he wraps his hands around the monster’s throat and squeezes until there is a sickening crunching sound as he severs its spine.
I’m not certain if they are real, or a last hallucination of my dying mind, when I hear the gasps from behind me.
The triad came to save us.
But they are no honorable Aurelian Empire warriors.
I stare at them with a mix of fear and gratitude. I owe them my life…
And my future will be brutal under their control, because by the laws of their species, they now own me.
The three men have buzzed heads, thick jaws, and powerful, strong features with slate-grey eyes that bore straight through my soul. Their robes are pitch black, the antithesis of the pure white clothes of the Empire. The robes are opened arrogantly, showing their sweat-soaked, muscled bodies. The three of them are built for war. The aliens must be each five, six hundred pounds of pure muscle, slabs of strength with skin the color and hue of marble. They are statues, come to life to save us, and take us.
Their marble skin is not untouched and pure like those who serve the honorable Empire. Over their hearts are the brands that mark them as Fanatics, twin half-circles seared into their flesh meant to mimic the birthmark of their living God. The pale skin is raised, but worse yet, the lower half-circle is filled in with black in, marking them as honored soldiers of the alien war-god.
They have killed men of their own kind, taking up arms to destroy the purest force of good in the universe. Their purpose is to destroy the last sanctuary I hoped to escape to. They have scars marring their flesh, white markings from Orb-Blades and Scorp claws, that makes them even more brutal.
The stink of them fills the room, this raw, beastly musk and sweat, but it doesn’t assault my nose. It’s testosterone and violence, and every breath I take, I taste them.
My heart pounds, and I am frozen. I was able to will my hand to clutch my dagger when I faced down a Scorp, but against these three, I am unmade, my body reacting like a prey animal. A frisson runs up and down my spine as their presence washes over me, the brutality of their muscled frames, the swift death of their movements, the power inherent in their beings. They could grab me with one finger and press me against the wall. The huge one who wrestled down a Scorp snapped its neck with two big hands, and I swallow hard as I imagine one of those hands wrapping around my throat as his hard grey eyes stare through me, telling me that I amhis. On their foreheads is a second, small version of the brand. These are true believers, a triad who have pledged themselves to the Old Ways and the dark prophecies of their evil Priests.
The Old Ways.
They believe that if they save your life…
They own you.
Forever.
6
KRAZAK
Nine lives. Eight are formless, human-like shapes, grey, cowering at the back of the cellar while one stands, a blade in her hand, ready to die a warrior’s death.
She has nothing more than a kitchen knife in her hand that she wielded against a monster three times her size, a Scorp who would have dragged her back to its Queen for a torturous death. There’s a fire in her bright green eyes, and somehow, while the other humans are formless, she’s in pure focus, every one of her features imprinted on my mind while the other eight women are vague shadows.
Her scent. The essence of her being smellsright, in a way that I’ve never felt before.
My eyes roll back as the Mating Rage rushes over me. It’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced, a ravenous, starving hunger, this intenseneedto breed the woman, to take her, right now, to rip her white dress from her smooth, flawless skin and own her body, drinking in her scent as I press her against the floor and claim her as my own. My cock throbs, stiffening urgently.
I need to pump her full of my seed. My body, my mind, has no purpose except to drive my manhood deep inside her tight little human pussy, my hips made to thrust, my hands made to spread her thighs open, my heart made to pump my cock full of blood.
“No!”Bolden telepaths to me, the shock and grief in his aura mirroring mine as he snaps me back to reality.
All three of us feel the same horrible ache, the ache that should not,cannotbe here, the ache that no woman can instill in us…
Because our Mate is dead.
I lick my lips, clenching the hilt of my blade, and force my Orb-Blade to deactivate as I look her up and down. I fight with the Mating Rage, like taming a wild horse, breaking it down and leashing my own desires to dominate the fierce woman.
She looks nothing like our Mate. She could not be her sister or cousin, there’s no reason to it, no way she could share DNA with our Mate who died so far away, and I can’t understand it. The Priests told me there would be trials on my way to destiny. That I would face things I never imagined, but this, this is a torture that no man should endure. What trick is being played on us?
I’m hesitant, but I can’t stop myself from smelling her. My nostrils flare as I taste her innocence. A virgin. That’s what brought up the Mating Rage—but I’ve smelled untouched women before, and they’ve never made me react, not like this, making my blood boil and my cock throb, making me hunger in a way I did not know was possible.